


Cling to the Light

by Wenzel



Series: Between Shadows and Light [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, a bit of klance in this, and a lot of sheith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7917613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wenzel/pseuds/Wenzel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith is gone, captured by the Galra. Where does that leave the others?</p><p>Sheith and a bit of Klance!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cling to the Light

**1\. Pidge**

 

The vastness of space, Pidge thought, carried so much. In the emptiness, between the asteroids and stars, messages flowed from ships to stations and back. Some were glorified white noise. Pidge’s system plucked a message about a broken shower out of the radio waves and presented it like it was the key to Pidge’s search. She’d sighed as she deleted it.

Other times, though, the system would dig through the noise to find a single, lone word that led to something great. _The Red Paladin has been captured_ had been one, weeks ago. It’d been squeezed between repair reports and borderline gossip about the attack on Central Command.

“Galran’s changed since you guys studied it,” she told Allura over dinner once. “The language is… softer, almost. Still a bit like a spitting cat, but there’s more to it.” Allura had listened, her glittering eyes sharp. “It’s going to take some time to update the system.”

“I can help,” Allura said. And she had—she’d sat beside Pidge as they worked through tenses and syntax and vocabulary. The Alteans had been a diplomatic race, and whoever had taught Allura hadn’t cut corners.

Galran was a harsh sing-song language. It fit in a strange rhythm and beat. When Pidge’s head hurt and she wanted to sleep, she’d sit there and listen to the recordings. It lulled her to a daze; when the recordings ended, she came back to herself. She’d be sitting wherever the working mood took her: sometimes in the control room, other times in an isolated bay, one time in the kitchen, in front of a microwave. Every time she returned from the daze, she wished for a bit of fire in her mind. Whatever fire she’d carried before Central Command had been gutted. Even sleep didn’t help. She dreamed of her family and the sun. When she woke, her computer greeted her with hundreds of messages to comb through and the faint words that’d carved a home in her chest. _If you leave, we can’t form Voltron and that means we can’t defend the universe against Zarkon._

They had him. There wasn’t a sense of guilt to that. She’d done nothing wrong, and they’d needed Allura. But Voltron was no longer available and her family lay out of reach until they got Keith back. The coldness in the thoughts dampened the panic that kept her awake. They’d saved Allura. This time, once they had information and were prepared, they’d go in and save Keith too.

The certainty wavered as weeks passed. The messages were more plentiful. The Red Paladin was still contained and the Red Lion was on the home planet. Pidge dreamed in Galran. Some of what she heard there was real, an imitation of so many messages. Others were feral snarls masquerading as something real. One time, her father spoke to her in Galran and she woke in shivers.

 _The Red Paladin was attacked; potential cell of traitors at Central Command. Engage G-41 Protocol._ There was no answer for what G-41 Protocol was. Instead of thinking about the first part of the message, she dedicated her time to searching through the other messages, hoping to put something together. The database came up short. But she added it as a keyword search and left the program to its business. After that, it was a matter of sending the message along to the others. For a moment, she almost called them for a face-to-face meeting. But when the world tilted around her at the thought, she took the coward’s way out. She sent a simple text message to the others and stayed in the bay. She didn’t want to see their reactions.

There was nothing she could do for Keith. She didn’t know him well—only through their short time in each other’s presence and what she’d heard from the others since his capture. She knew he had no one waiting for him back home. Perhaps, she thought, that’d be his strength. Another flood of messages arrived and she went back to work.

 

* * *

**2\. Hunk**

 

People forgot things when they were busy. Pidge forgot to eat when she was busy. Shiro stopped sleeping. Allura, he’d discovered, would forget both. And Lance would stop caring about his health. He’d get injured and would ignore the fracture. He’d eat garbage and then wonder when he felt awful. Worst of all, Lance would start to sleep in odd places. Coran tripped over him once. Lance had endured the quick scolding with usual cheer and then gone right back to sleep when Coran left.

Only Coran and he functioned well. They switched roles now and then. Coran would herd everyone to the kitchen while Hunk cooked; other times, Hunk got the unenviable job of finding everyone and sending them to Coran’s little buffet. They split the job of sleep shepherding, at least. It was Hunk’s least favourite job to find Shiro ghosting through the Castle, his expression blank, and tell Shiro it was time to sleep. Hunk knew about the nightmares. He also knew they’d got worse since—

He didn’t want to think about it. But everything came back to it. He’d known Keith, unlike Pidge. He’d entered the Garrison a year after Keith, in a different stream too. But it wasn’t hard to know about him. Keith’s status as a star pilot earned him swooning fans and doting teachers, despite Keith’s harsh demeanour. Hunk wasn’t the type to lie to himself: he’d been fascinated for the first year. Keith’s sharpness cut against everything he touched. While it made him enemies, Hunk hadn’t been close enough to become one. Lance tried to get close. It’d ended in a rebuffing that he’d never got over.

The one time Hunk worked with Keith, it’d been a startling experience. The sim had handled butter-smooth and drifted from target to target like a feather. Hunk had given updates on engineering status during the sim-fight; a communications cadet relayed rapidly changing orders. Keith’s acknowledgements would have been offensively short if Hunk hadn’t been gaping at his performance.

“He’s a jackass,” the communications cadet had said later. “But when he’s flying like that, it’s hard to care.” Lance had argued, of course. _A jackass is a jackass, no matter how talented_ , he’d said. But Hunk had only shrugged and distracted him with food. Keith’s rudeness never seemed personal: Keith just came across as oblivious and a bit self-righteous when pressed.

When Keith washed out, Hunk hadn’t poured one out for him or mourned. It’d been sad and a bit unnecessary, but whatever had happened between Shiro and Keith wasn’t his business and Hunk had his own life to live. The only good thing to come of the whole mess was Lance becoming a fighter pilot. “He couldn’t take the pressure,” Lance said the day he was promoted. “I’m surprised he didn’t wash out sooner.” It was bullshit. Lance probably knew that. But Lance always spoke a tough game, and Hunk just nodded along.

Meeting Keith again hadn’t been in the cards, yet it’d happened. Keith’s fire hadn’t dimmed, though it’d been channelled in strange directions. He tried not to think too much on Keith’s desperation and rage. _You’re putting the lives of two people over the lives of everyone else in the entire galaxy_ had been too sharp, too _personal_ for the Keith he’d known at the Garrison. Something had happened in between, and Hunk suspected it had a lot to do with what he didn’t know about Shiro and Keith.

Part of him thought he should have asked. Their interactions had been friendly: he remembered goofing off the night the Galra attacked the Castle and Arusians. But Shiro and Keith’s relationship reeked of something closely held, and Hunk had always thought there’d be time for small secrets to worm their way free.

Now Keith was gone. Sometimes, in between working and making sure the others didn’t collapse, he thought about their last real conversation. Allura had just been captured and everyone wanted to get her—except for Keith. Keith had argued iagainst it with a coldness that was familiar from when Hunk had been in that simulator with him. It was a calm that let him decide which ships to abandon in a dogfight. Hunk had admired it at the Garrison. But in the control room, it’d been too harsh. Allura was a friend. They couldn’t just leave her, even if it was dangerous.

But they’d just exchanged Keith for Allura, and now they couldn’t form Voltron. He wondered, sometimes, if it would have been better to have not gone. Allura hadn’t said anything about the matter. It made him think that whatever she had to say wasn’t good.

He didn’t share his thoughts on the subject. Not to Coran, not to the other Paladins, not to Allura. They didn’t need to know that he doubted his own judgement. They didn’t need to know he wondered if he was too soft. They needed him to be Hunk: dependable, smart, and loyal.

They didn’t need to know sharp edges were growing inside him.

 

* * *

**3\. Lance**

 

Bones crunched under his kick. The guard collapsed as their left knee gave out: they opened their mouth to shout, but a punch made their jaw clack shut. Lance delivered a kick to their mid-section. Ribs creaked under his foot, and air wheezed out of their lungs. They looked up at him through dazed gold eyes. Lance grit his teeth and kicked again. It took another two kicks before the Galra passed out.

Nobody watched him do it. But it didn’t quench the building frustration that fuelled him through the ship. He stalked down the halls, his gun ready for droids or sentries. There were only a dozen living Galra on the ship, but they were wired into communications and ready to warn the others. He couldn’t let that happen. Pidge and Hunk were digging through files at the command room, while Shiro and Allura were stealing identities for Allura to use.

Which left Lance to see if there were prisoners to free. It’d been a long trip—he had to sneak around and play the spy. There were other ships in the convoy nearby: an alarm would end their little infiltration. “Fuck this,” he muttered. He hated it. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it. It was that he wasn’t built for the job. Every kick or punch he delivered, he heard a little voice pick it apart. It wasn’t good enough—it wasn’t _his_ kind of good.

What made it worse was that he wasn’t even here. Hadn’t been for over a month. Every time Lance did this on a ship, he’d go to the cells and—part of him, the dumb part—would brace for his return. But Keith was never there. He was still at Central Command, going through who knew what. Lance told himself that if he’d been captured, he’d already be out. It was a bit of bravado that he knew was a lie.

The irony that the one person who hadn’t been on board with saving Allura had been captured hadn’t escaped him. He remembered being angry with Keith, resentful that _once again_ Keith had to play the know it all when lives were on the line. Of course they could get Allura back. Sure, it’d be a risk, but they always came out on top. He’d watched Voltron fall apart with the sort of realization a bug had as a foot came down on it. They were outclassed. They hadn’t been ready. It hadn’t fully sunk in until the wormhole collapsed.

Keith was gone. Not dead—not yet—but gone. It felt strange to go to a training room and see no one. Lance walked by Keith’s room and had to stop himself from banging on the door. There wasn’t anyone to annoy there anymore. There wasn’t anyone to compete with except for a memory. Keith would have delivered that kick better. Keith would have been faster. Keith would have been quieter. But there was no Keith to prove it.

It was like when Keith had washed out. Lance had spent years competing with him in scores, grades, and popularity. His one standard had been Keith. If Keith did better, Lance needed to do better. If Keith failed—and he’d failed repeatedly after the Cerberus mission—that was something to take pleasure in. It was a job well done. He hadn’t cared that Shiro was gone, or that he suspected there was something going on between the two: all that mattered was winning.

It’d been cruel, he realized now. Keith had evidently been imploding. But after years of failure, the sweet elixir of success had been addictive. Even when Keith didn’t pay attention to him, what did it matter? He was winning and everyone knew it. When Keith dropped out, Lance took his spot in the fighter program too.

But the elixir had turned sour. When he flew, he knew people were comparing him to the person he’d replaced. Instructors would talk about Keith’s old sims, and cadets would talk about Keith’s old interactions, whether it was sharp words for bullies or funny things or even just his presence. Keith had been a fixture. Lance was not.

Keith had left Lance to see Shiro fall apart. Keith had left Lance to see Hunk’s eyes darken and Pidge’s pale skin turn wan. Allura stood tall, but he saw how her spirit bended, slightly broken by the knowledge that Voltron could not form and it was _her fault_. But it wasn’t her fault. It was—it was Keith’s. Keith shouldn’t have fought Zarkon. He shouldn’t have gone on his own. He’d been selfish for the spotlight and too convinced of his own power.

Lance shook as he walked the halls. They couldn’t have stopped Zarkon without Allura—but neither could they stop him without Keith. Which left them where? Stranded, he thought. Crippled by their inability to accomplish anything other than harassing stray Galra ships or infiltrating the occasional behemoth convoy. Zarkon had to know that. If he kept Keith at Central Command, eventually he’d draw out the Paladins, even if out of sheer desperation.

“I hate you,” he breathed, and he wasn’t sure if it was at Zarkon or Keith. Zarkon had taken away _everything_. But Keith had been arrogant and stupid, leaving Lance without the sun to his moon. He didn’t have anything to strive for except for a memory of starlight.

 

* * *

  **4\. Allura**

 

The growls and spitting hisses of the Galran language always hurt her ears. It was an inelegant language—dissimilar from Altean, which flowed lightly on the air. But then the Galra were so close to animals, and whatever kindness she’d held for the race was long dead, just as her planet was. “I heard some of them are white as teeth,” one said to another. “And that others are a bark-brown. They’re not furred.”

The other Galra snorted. “They’re bare? That can’t be natural. Unless they’re reptiles?”

“Not snakes or lizards,” the taller Galra said. “Warm-blooded. Their faces are—they’re _rounder_ , fleshy, and naked. That’s what Jax said. He caught the Paladin, so he should know.”

Her companion sniffed. It was a disdainful motion, not a scenting of the air, but it still make Allura stiffen at the bar. Even in her shifted form, her scent would sometimes ring as inauthentic to perceptive Galra. “Jax is a fool. But I suppose he isn’t blind.”

“He isn’t!” she said. “And he wouldn’t lie. Not when Central transfers would say he’s lying.” A meaty hand wrapped around a tavern cup. It was clay and painted in typical Galra colours: red, purple, and gold. Allura had never cared for the sharp geometric patterns, but it’d always been impolite to say that in open company. “But you’ve heard the latest, haven’t you?”

“Attacked,” her companion said, “and the Emperor isn’t happy. I won’t be surprised if there are purgings. Not for the freak’s sake, but for discipline.” The woman nodded. “I’m surprised the Emperor has let the creature—the Paladin—loose, though. I’ve seen the reports on what they did to Central Command.”

“They were many, then,” the woman said, “and they had that machine… Voltron?” The companion nodded. “Now they’re weak. What would the Paladin do? Fight off thousands of Galra? Steal a ship and travel through a hundred Galra checkpoints? It is a display of power, Finra. The Emperor’s enemy can walk through his halls and do nothing.”

Finra was quiet for a moment before he lifted his cup. “To the Emperor,” he said. “May his command stretch to the universe’s edges for all eternity.”

The woman lifted her cup as well and clicked their cups’ sides together. “To the three moons and the beacon beneath the sand.” They drank a strange red liquid as Allura watched. She knew ten thousand years had passed, but that cheer was strange. What was the beacon? Did it refer to the Lions? She shook her head. It was another thing to file away about the strange new world she lived in.

“You gonna have another?” the tavernkeep asked. Allura startled, but the Galra didn’t seem to care. “You’ve been here a while. No post?”

“Not yet,” she said briskly. “But I should get going. Ah… I must ask, though. I’ve heard mention of a Jax? He captured a Paladin? He sounds quite impressive.”

The tavernkeep’s nose wrinkled. “Nothing impressive about capturing a rebel floatin’ in space rubble. But to hear him tell it, he fought off a horde of starships, beat the rebel hand to hand, and had the Emperor himself bow to him. Don’t be in awe. I coulda done what he did.”

“Still,” she hedged, “he recognized that the rebel was valuable.”

“Not hard when Central Command’s in pieces behind him.” He eyed her, the look tinged with suspicion. “You a starchaser?”

Allura stared at him blankly. “Pardon?”

“You’re from Central, then,” he decided. “Didn’t mean offense, but we call outer-stationed Galra obsessed with anyone who gets a bit attention from Central ‘starchasers’. Think of them as desperate bootlickers. You’ll probably get a few yourself if you’ve done anything notable. You still want a drink?”

“…No, thank you,” she said. She left the tavernkeep there, as well as the woman and her companion, Finra. She had a name now, and that’s what she’d come for. The streets outside were busy—strange smooth white dirt built squat houses that were piled on top of each other. Above, lines criss-crossed, holding signs, lights, and clothes. Galra cities were messy, she thought, though they may have had a certain charm to the right person. She was used to stone and metal.

She walked through the colony’s entertainment district. Primal beats echoed out of the houses. Some civilian Galra walked around, a few drunk and many dancing. If she didn’t know the Empire’s crimes, she’d have smiled. Instead, she focused on making her way through the crowd and ignoring the soft coy looks some civilians sent her.

The Green Lion awaited her on the town’s outskirts. Pidge would be there, working and watching for any suspicious activity. “We’re not letting you go down alone,” Shiro had told her. _Not after last time_ went unsaid. She knew they didn’t blame her. But they didn’t need to when she had herself.

Keith was gone. She’d failed by being captured, and she’d failed again by having Keith be captured. Failure was part of the mission, she knew. Mistakes happened. But Keith had been an unwelcome loss and—even worse—the Red Lion was out of their hands. It hurt to say, but if it’d been just Keith, she could have found a replacement. The other Paladins would have grieved. She would have joined them. But the mission would have demanded a new Red Paladin.

She should have told them Zarkon was the former Black Paladin, but it raised troubling questions with answers she didn’t want them to know. They knew now—they’d demanded answers after Voltron tore apart. But those answers would never satisfy until she told them Voltron’s roots.

When would that come? Likely when they retrieved Keith. And when would that come? Maybe never. She’d realized that when Pidge first found the news. Keith was in Central Command, and the Red Lion likely far, far away. How did they defeat Zarkon without Voltron?  She tried not to contemplate it. She focused, instead, on retrieving Keith. Maybe she could lure Zarkon into transporting Keith; maybe she could steal the Red Lion out from under his nose. Zarkon wouldn’t be able to replace Keith: he’d had ten thousand years when the Red Lion had no pilot, and there was no reason to believe he’d find a replacement when the Red Lion already had a pilot.

But in her weaker moments, she thought about Keith. She didn’t know him well. She knew he was lonely and stubborn and a bit harsh. She knew he’d advocated for leaving her—the only wise choice the Paladins could have made during her capture. She could have survived and even escaped as a prisoner. Zarkon had no incentive to kill her: she would have been a tool to lure the Paladins with, and someone to interrogate about the Castle of Lions.

Keith... Keith was more vulnerable. He had never had a family, from what Shiro told her, and he was used to being an outsider. Allura had seen his desire to make something of himself. He had a clarity of purpose she admired. He’d been chosen as the Red Paladin, and he had accepted it without complaint and without shrinking from the task.

But he’d taken to the task _too_ well. He was eager to fight and eager to win, and he let that impulse to fight take the lead. He’d fought Zarkon when he shouldn’t have; he’d almost hurt the Balmera, only saved by the interventions of others. And worst of all, he’d attacked Pidge with that clarity of purpose. He struggled with the feelings of others, and that made him vulnerable to manipulation by others.

Zarkon would offer a purpose beyond all others. Zarkon would offer understanding and encouragement for his aggression and ambition. Keith was—for all his humanity—the closest of the Paladins to the Galra. Zarkon would notice that, and in the absence of his friends, Keith would find new ones who would lead him down a darker path. She could only hope that, when they found him, they could bring him back to the light.

 

* * *

**5\. Shiro**

 

Shiro’s father had always believed that people got what they deserved. When something bad happened, he would never suggest vengeance or grudges: it always came back to improving your own behaviour. Everything came and went from what you put into it: if you didn’t make friends, it was due to your behaviour and it was up to you to fix it.

It was an easy philosophy to live by when things were going well. But when you lost your job, your friends, and your health… what did you do then? Shiro had watched his father waste away from cancer. His father’s attitude never changed. What could he be paying for, Shiro had wondered at the time. His father wasn’t a man of religion, so there were no cosmic debts to pay. He’d always lived a clean and kind life. Shiro had almost asked him once. But his father’s shaking hand had rested on his, and Shiro had let the thought drift away to something else, something kinder. Maybe, he’d think when he was older, both he and his father had accepted the limits of the philosophy to the natural chaos of life. There was no control over others: all that you could change was yourself, and his father had taught him that from the cradle to his father’s own grave.

The Galra’s jaw cracked under his punch. The Galra gurgled on blood; Shiro kept them pinned to the ground. His own hands were shaking, reminding him of his father. He hadn’t brought this on himself. He’d been kind, helpful, and honest. He’d landed on Cerberus with a heart as light as a feather. He’d come back to Earth a twisted mockery of what he’d once been.

There’d been no saving him from the Galra. He struggled to remember what had been done to him. When he did, the memories came in images he wished he could leave be. Whatever had happened while with the Galra burned in his veins. It came as anger and hate and a bitter pain that flooded over him and made him drown. His arm’s socket ached, even in the warm pleasure of having companions again. “Are you all right?” someone would ask. He’d look at them through flashes of pain and strange images carved into his brain and smile. Everything was fine. _Everything was fine._

“Please,” the Galra croaked. “Please— “

He’d killed so many. He’d destroyed ships of these creatures. How many Galra lives was a human one worth? It was a sharp hatred that poisoned him. He’d hated them, feared them, even when he’d escaped. Then they’d hurt his friends. They’d hurt Allura; they’d almost killed Lance. Pidge’s distant eyes belonged on a soldier twice her age. Hunk’s brightness came clouded by dark thoughts.

And Keith. Keith was gone. “You captured him,” Shiro said. His breathing was heavy and harsh. “The Paladin.” He wrapped his prosthetic hand around the Galra’s throat. He tightened the grip, but not enough to stop the creature from speaking.

“I did!” the Galra said. “I did, I did! It was my _honour_ to stop a rebel.” His gold eyes were wide and wild. “But I…” Cowardice warred with pride. “I don’t want to die.”

The Galra—Jax—knew that his emperor couldn’t save him here. Shiro’s grip tightened. The Galra wheezed. The Galra’s teeth were stained green. Shiro’s stomach twisted. He was supposed to be one of the Paladins of Voltron. Kindness, compassion, and honour mattered.

But all Shiro saw was Keith’s flint-coloured eyes as their gazes met again for the first time in a year. “I didn’t think you’d come back,” Keith had said when the battle calmed. They were Paladins now, bound together for a greater purpose. “I knew the reports had to be wrong, but...”

Shiro had touched him lightly on the shoulder. “I understand,” he said, though the words burned. He wanted to promise he’d always come back for Keith, but he couldn’t get the words out before the moment passed. It was so much easier to make promises to the others. They wouldn’t shatter if betrayed. They still had each other.

Keith had no one. No one, Shiro thought in the silence of the Castle, but him. It’d been that way for the two decades Keith had existed. People came and went and broke promise after promise until Keith no longer registered when people asked him to believe them. Keith had done nothing wrong. But to the chaotic universe, it didn’t matter. Shiro thought of his father’s shaking hand and the images in the back of his mind and tried to breathe.

He remembered the first time they’d met. He’d offered his hand to Keith with a smile. It’d been impulse: he didn’t know who Keith was. He’d watched the simulator’s screen and seen raw talent and instinct. He’d watched the pod and seen nobody near Keith, neither fellow cadet or instructor. Instead, other cadets glowered at him from the corner. Maybe the cadet inside was an asshole, he’d mused, or maybe they were one of those people who struggled with others, despite their technical talents.

If he’d known what the handshake would turn into, he wasn’t sure he’d have done it. It’d hurt too much. He’d bent rules to stay near Keith. He’d shown improper favouritism every time he gave Keith a personal lesson. He’d skirted fraternization rules by visiting Keith, even when he wasn’t a tutor anymore. It’d been innocent. He’d wanted to be Keith’s friend. But he’d come back to Keith’s warm eyes and hesitant smile, and his heart burned worse than any pain. He felt like he’d betrayed Keith, in a way. Shiro was supposed to be his friend. But all Shiro wanted was to hold him close and promise him he’d never leave again.

The Galra twitched beneath him. Shiro almost startled; he loosened his grip, and the Galra gasped. “I’m sorry,” the creature slurred. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t hurt me—“ Shiro dragged himself up. He left the Galra to moan on the ground. His metal arm’s hand was warm from the Galra’s throat. Its strength was inhuman: it was Galran. Sometimes in dreams, he’d rip it off. The pain always woke him up.

“I need details on every ship going to Central Command,” Shiro said. “Same with those to your home planet. Then I’ll let you go.” He turned to look into the Galra’s gold eyes. “Then I’ll let you live.” It was a lie. The Galra's face shuttered, as though he knew. But did he want to believe? Just like Shiro wanted to believe that Keith would come back without the same shadows he had?

Killing the Galra brought no relief.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at the-wenzel.tumblr.com!


End file.
